Carousel; Part I

Last night I dreamt of a carousel horse. It lingered just outside my doorstep, patiently waiting for thumbed assistance to ring the doorbell. It came. It was the paperboy, bringing home the latest news of god-knows-what "knowledge" he couldn't care less about, though it was, of course, his livelihood.

The door gently opened with a creak, and out stepped a man. I couldn't see him, just the lower torso and below; and from quite an intimidating angle too; like the unimportant characters of old classic animations.

I was standing behind the somehow large and static leaves of a houseplant he must have decided to give some Sun.

The man did not see the plastic pink horse. The horse did not see the man. She was looking down at the area that must have been her stomach, just under the chocolate brown saddle. She looked quite like a candy bar from afar.

Under the film of her now slightly translucent plastic, were butterflies. Little pale blue ones, with dark borders on their wings. She wondered if they could see reflections in between flutters; of places and things.

They stopped fluttering; and seemed to look up towards her stiff mane and eyes. She felt something on her back, light and airy -the perfect consistency for buttercream frosting-. She had grown wings. But they wouldn't let her fly. Like they were revered paintings mounted on unnervingly still walls.

A record is playing somewhere behind them. Light jazz. The kind that fogs your eyes with deep shades of blue, green, orange and brown. I am there, is the horse too? I'm not sure. The music isn't very loud; just enough for it to thread itself through both ears. A tricky game I'd say, it seems to be managing well, though. My eyes are slowly, silently, sheened by an obscure galaxy of violets, hazels and blues; all orbiting around a single record; black with red and gold at the centre.

The atmosphere around me begins to warp, with distant steely noises buzzing around my ankles.

There are women here, with pearly-white lace gloves and large little Moons strung round their necks; clutching onto their collarbones -perhaps to gossip with their owners about the other women's outfits-.

I glance down and feel my feet grow steady on the solid wooden floor. Roots begin to grow from my soles. My legs don’t move.

I shift my upper half, so that I am facing the paintings, in their glorious gold frames. Eventually the roots let my feet turn slightly. I take in the art with all of me -except my shoulders, which of course are facing two different ways; much to their annoyance I presume- and reach my hand out to touch them, from a distance. This particular one that I am now holding up high above my head, is of a mermaid solemnly stroking the water that is beneath her. She sits on a rock, looking deep below into the ocean, rather than far out to unknown worlds and ships and the people of the land. It is almost as if her glances penetrate through the skin of her lap, and she is trying to find the blue butterflies that would show her perhaps another world, in between rapid flutters.

I grow tired of looking through the mirror. It is ornate, even, glinting in its great efforts to show-off. I rest my gaze upon my hands, to see if the veins are still there. It is blanketed by lace as well, but only one; the left. I flip it over, slowly, like I would an omelette. The lace wears off towards the centre. The loose threads are trying to wind themselves together again, though that might take a while.

A needle pushes through the callus on the tip of my index finger. I don’t really feel it, good thing it plays strings. There’s a string wrapped around it. It is almost like bait; except I didn’t have to be attracted to it. It pulls me away through a beige corridor. The music begins to fade out. Is the string a part of the record? Maybe. I lose focus.

Eventually, I end up in the bathroom. There’s a large basin. Peach, with a gold faucet. A strange pair. It reminds me of the Sun and Moon. They’re strange too. The most abstruse things I can think of really. Curiously surreal and bizarre; somehow an inviting property.

Something is dripping from the faucet. It looks like a tear-drop, but not as liquid; and when I touched it it wouldn’t stick to my skin. It just keeps growing larger and larger into a giant sand-coloured blob.

Sandman?

No response.

Well I guess no weaver of dreams from my locked-up vials of childhood floods was coming to whisk me away.

A white glow traced a ring around the sphere.

I was witnessing the birth of Saturn.